Properly and efficiently routing financial instrument transactions is necessary in order to insure accuracy in those transactions. For example, the value of any financial instrument may change in extremely brief periods of time, and this potential effect of time on value complicates transactions. In order to decrease any complications imposed by the time effect on value, and more properly and efficiently enter and route financial instrument transactions, a system and/or tool could be provided to the trader to assist in financial instrument transactions.
Any system or tool provided to the trader to assist in financial instrument transactions should provide the trader with market and/or instrument monitoring. If the system or tool provides market and/or instrument monitoring to the trader, the trader can understand any possible changes in value of the instrument as time passes, and plan future trades. For example, if a trader was aware that the market for Stock X is slumping, he or she would probably not buy calls in Stock X (the right to purchase stock X in the future at a predetermined price.) Yet if he or she was not aware of the slumping market conditions, and continued to buy calls on the expectation the price will rise, he or she would most likely experience losses in the market. Thus a market and/or instrument monitoring system or tool would assist the trader in decreasing any complications that might be imposed by the time effect on value.
A market and/or instrument monitoring system or tool alone, however, does not fulfill the trader's needs. The trader also needs a system and tool designed to decrease complexity in other ways. This system and tool should, for example, provide the trader with the ability to enter his or her orders, as quickly as possible, in order to minimize any effect time might have on the value of the instrument and so decrease the trader's exposure to possible changing value. Additionally, even though the vast majority of trades are intended to be made, the trader may occasionally change his or her mind about the trade, or desire to pause or “park” the trade for a future time or date. Thus, the system or tool should also provide the trader with a number of modification abilities, for example, the ability to modify orders by changing his or her trade before execution, the ability to pause or park any trade before execution, and the ability to abort any trade before execution.
In addition to providing modification of orders, quick order entry, and market and/or instrument monitoring, any system and tool used to assist in financial instrument transactions should also provide the trader with the ability to monitor the trades he or she has made. Monitoring trades provides the trader with the ability to understand his or her overall position and modify or sustain that position as desired.
In addition to monitoring trades, order modification, quick order entry, and market and/or instrument monitoring, it would also be helpful if a system or tool for executing financial transactions aided in processing those transactions by routing the orders to the exchanges for the instruments. The trader would be well served by having a routing link to the exchange so that his or her trades are executed as soon as possible. A system or tool that executes trades as soon as possible would help limit any time effect on the trade value. That is, since an instrument's value may change in fractions of a second, a routing link to an exchange would assist timely occurrence of the trade by practically contemporaneously executing the trade as the trader enters the trade. This practically contemporaneous execution—minimizing trading lag time—would help preserve the trader's understanding of the value of his or her trade by minimizing any change in the value of the instrument during the time span between the decision to trade, the order entry and the execution of the trade.
Finally, in addition to the desired attributes identified above, a trading system and tool should be flexible, so that it can be used to trade as many instruments as possible, on as many exchanges as possible; user-configurable, so the trader can customize the system or tool as he or she desires; and reliable, so that the trader can consistently use the system and tool without concern as to system conditions.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a system and tool to a trader to assist in properly and efficiently routing financial instrument transactions.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a system and tool to a trader that minimizes any time lag in entering and executing financial instrument transactions.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a system and tool to a trader that is flexible, user customizable and reliable.